Paper dollar’s rise against silver makes precious metal attractive

Paper money has strengthened in the last six months, giving you an opening to buy into silver and save. Now is the time.

The charts nearby suggest it is the time to trade a wad of your paper dollars into silver. The metal hit nearly F$50 an ounce in 2011, but has lost steam. It is now at about F$27 an ounce. If you have been following our discussions lately, you are able to apply the principles of honest money and capital preservation to an actual transaction.

You don’t follow the precious metals markets, and neither do I. My interest in gold and silver is more in the principle than in particulars about Morgan dollars or South African Krugerrands. My ardor is for the principle of honest money and a desire to have a stake in it. Just as a Christian man or a patriotic man invests in the 2nd Amendment by owning a military-grade firearm under militia provision of the Tennessee constitution, he should have a stake in lawful money by owning at least a few bags or tubes of it.

Lawful money is that which is public money. Public money, or the money of account in the United States if you will, is circulated 90 percent dimes, quarters, halves and dollars. It was issued more or less meeting constitutional muster, and preserves the buying power of whomever holds it between his fingers.

Since 1965 the U.S. and the Federal Reserve System have issued a private currency. That medium of exchange is the Federal Reserve note, or paper dollar, unbacked fiat currency that pretends to be the representational currency-and-coin system that once was. Billions of dollars in this coinage has gone into hiding (or the smelter), awaiting better days.

Silver better than gold

The hoards in hiding are not so secreted away that you cannot acquire a piece of the action. I suggest you contact Bruce Paulhamus, founder of Southern Precious Metals Exchange in East Ridge. His exchange has a public coin shop next to the U-Haul on Ringgold Road. His contact info is below. I advertise his business on the air, and had him as my guest today to discuss fiat money and what to do about it.

I have read The Moneychanger newsletter out of Westpoint, Tenn., long enough to have drummed into my head the benefits of silver over gold. Mr. Paulhamus agrees that silver is the better deal. It is undervalued vis a vis paper. It is highly divisible, coming to you in small coins you can use in the marketplace. If there is a collapse, and gold spikes to F$4,000 or F$10,000 an ounce, you are going to have a real problem in commerce coming to someone with a one-ounce gold coin.

A bag of F$1,000 face value in circulated silver coins is sold by weight. A bag weighs about 52 pounds, Mr. Paulhamus says. It contains 715 ounces of silver, or 44.68 pounds of silver. It would cost you today about F$22,000. The exchange makes its living by charging a transaction fee. If you buy within the state of Tennessee, you pay a sales tax of nearly 10 percent. But Southern PMX is opening an office in Atlanta, and could ship to you in Tennessee. Georgia does not impose a sales tax on money swaps.

The paper dollar’s value has plunged so badly in the past 10 years that silver is much more expensive if all you have to buy it with is the green rectangle.

Christianity’s interest in redemption

Christianity has an interest in integrity of the marketplace. Christianity is all about redemption. Christ came to save sinners by his atoning death on the cross, buying them back for God from the slavery to sin. Christians are people who are redeemed, purchased at the cost of Christ’s blood and death.

Redeemability of a paper note is important. Our green rectangles are not redeemable. In other words, you cannot turn them in an obtain real money, which the notes pretend to represent. The Federal Reserve note system is ideasphere money, unbacked, nonrepresentational — the bills in no way representing anything. A F$1 or a F$100 bill are equally specious, each an “IOU Nothing.”

Scripture condemns, forbids and prohibits irredeemability under the eighth commandment. It requires honesty that kings, princes and presidents are commanded to protect — to shield the widow, the orphan, the alien, the poor and the marketplace itself. “Thou shalt not steal.”

The theory in general is that of honest weights. As milk is bought by the gallon and lumber by the foot, money is traded by weight. “Diverse weights and diverse measures, they are both alike, an abomination to the Lord. *** Diverse weights are an abomination to the Lord, and dishonest scales are not good” (Proverbs 20: 10, 23). Leviticus in the 19th chapter talks first about loving strangers, and goes without transition into a prohibition of injustice in weights. “You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length, weight or volume. You shall have honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:35, 26). That passage goes on to declare, “Therefore you shall observe all My statutes and all My judgments, and perform them: I am the Lord.”

God’s law forbids “those people” from inflating the money supply. But we cannot stop them from doing it. Our response needs to be in evading their system. God gives us the wisdom to limit our exposure to their lawlessness. That bypass of their raging cancer in the body of the free market is honest money.

If you are a Nooganomics.com reader or listener, call and ask to speak to Mr. Paulhamus to discuss your interests in trading into silver. I do not receive any compensation or commission for making this suggestion, but note that Mr. Paulhamus is my exclusive advertiser for metals on 1240 Copperhead AM.

His phone number is (423) 825-4653. Please be sure to say you are a fan of Nooganomics.com, and are calling on his business at my suggestion.

About The Author

David Tulis hosts a talk show weekdays 9 to 11 a.m. on Noogaradio 92.7 FM 95.3 FM HD4 (digital), covering local economy and free markets in Chattanooga and beyond. Support this site and his radio station in Chattanooga, on your smartphone via the TuneIn radio app or at Noogaradio.com. Noisily patronize his advertisers. Also, “buy me a coffee at the tip jar.”